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For reference, this review comes with about 4 hours of play after completion of all content at the time of review.

TLDR: fun game, refreshing take on sandbox survival genre, great with friends

As a veteran of the "open-world sandbox survival" genre, I was wary of my buddy (who also tends to quickly hype things up) trying to get us into the game. Over 3 different consoles, I've probably put over 2000 hours on Minecraft, I have over 1000 on Terraria (which is a bit less but same idea), countless hours in other RPGs that this game draws a bit of inspiration from. I was afraid it would be just another experience of play for a few hours and get bored.

On the contrary, I stepped into a world where I felt familiarly refreshed. Like I mentioned, it has its similarities to sandbox survivals like Minecraft. Core gameplay loop is fairly similar. Spawn naked, get wood (nice), make basic tools, build basic shelter, and survive. However, the system itself felt new enough to the genre that it appealed to me. As a veteran of Runescape and Skyrim, I enjoyed the "git gud at things by doing the things" leveling system. Contrary to Minecraft, I immediately had a direct measure of how much I was progressing in my playthrough in the different aspects: "Oh, I've been chopping trees a lot. Not only do I have a bunch of wood but my WC level is now 10 levels higher. Neat." I constantly felt a sense of achievement (albeit minor) as I got level up notifications in the same way that I get minor serotonin boosts when I see those fireworks in OSRS because I leveled up my fishing.

In addition to the sense of progression, Valheim is aided in being a sandbox because as you progress in the game, you should theoretically have a much more macro sense of progression in terms of your base. While it is technically possible to play the entire game with a small base that is built around a little hut just big enough for a bed and a fire, coming back from a long day of resource gathering in the mid to late game to see a large expansive compound has a huge sense of accomplishment when thinking back to what your base may have looked like in the early game. The building in the game helps in that. Valheim uses a semi-realistic physics based building system in the sense that gravity DOES exist on build items, and you have to account for that. Knowing the trials and tests of "will this piece stay up?" as you built a base, and observing the finished product afterwards is a nice way of seeing how you've been able to build yourself up. With that being said, at the current time, there are a limited number of building options, but future updates theoretically should help that.

Combat in Valheim is simple but addicting. There are different weapon types, each with an associated skill (so the more you use a sword, the more you sword skill will level up, same with clubs/maces, axes, spears, etc.). I haven't played a whole lot of soulsborne games, but I would describe the combat in this as a much simpler and much more forgiving soulsborne style of combat. You are encouraged to learn enemy attack patterns to properly dodge/parry them so that you can get good DPS in. With that being said, if you felt like it, you are more than free to just swing away and hope you can make their HP hit zero before yours does. Some enemies are resistant to certain weapon types and weak to others as to discourage getting complacent with one weapon type throughout the game. Better weapons and armor can be crafted as you find the materials needed for them, and you'll get access to the better resources as you progress throughout. Enemy types do get repetitive, however. Yes, the game is in early access, but there are realistically only 5 or so different families of enemies. Many of those families have different versions, but they don't always give the sense of wide enemy variation. This also plays into the game's current state of exploration.

As of now, there are 5 fleshed out biomes, each with their own set of enemies and a boss to go along with it, with a few other biomes that can be found within the game, but just don't have much of anything. Doesn't sound like a lot at the start, and it really isn't, but it still feels appropriate. At least with the pace that my group played at, I rarely felt like we spent too much or too little time in any of the biomes, with the exception of one of the later biomes. Even after we cleared the boss for the area, we would often need more of this resource or that one, and would find ourselves halfway across the world because we set up a new forward base and needed to grind out some mining. The map itself is very large and built with numerous islands akin to a large archipelago. Especially in the early stages of outward expansion, the joy and sense of achievement in finding land after a long journey on the sea is one of the major drivers for me. Even in the late game, we are constantly trying to map out more and more land so that we can clear out the fog of war on the map. With that said, however, one area that stands to be improved is the exploration. As it is now, the discovery visibility is static. In other words, no matter where you are, what the weather is, or what you're doing, you will always only uncover a small radius on the map. Even though we're still trying to uncover more of our map, my friends and I agree at this point in the game (and yes, I know we're "done" with it, but we still like exploring), uncovering the map feels like a chore at this point. Unless they add other features (which, again, it's EA so very likely), I don't think anyone in their right mind would fully uncover every single spot in their world; perhaps this is intended.

On a different hand, one of the other things that makes the exploration in Valheim is the atmosphere presented. Between the wonderful use of low-poly textures but high-end FX visuals like god rays and water, as well as a masterfully crafted soundtrack, it's extremely difficult to NOT get lost in the world - recently, I've found myself turning on a soundtrack video on Youtube and working with it on in the background. A huge moment that sticks out in my own playthrough was, in an effort to try and find one of the bosses, I ended up finding an absolutely gorgeous river with a wonderfully crafted landscape that I marked for myself to create my own base, away from the base that the rest of the group had originally called home, merely because I thought it looked beautiful and wanted to spend more time there.

In my own time with the game, I do think I benefited from having people to play with. Now that I've played the game myself, I think I would really love the idea of playing a world completely solo, and taking on all of the challenges myself. However, trying to tackle this game and its challenges solo as a first time playthrough could very easily turn into a slog. On top of that, the devs themselves stated they recommend a group of 2-5, so I would highly encourage anyone who is on the fence to see if they have some friends who could also play it with them.

Played numerous hours on 360 back in the day with my brother. I can credit my time with Borderlands to my current love for RPGs. As a kid who loved shoot-em-ups, this took that to the next level, and I enjoyed the synergy that we found in building class types together. Coming back to it now, about 10 years later, gun play kind of feels like something of Fallout so far? Not sure why but that's the vibe I get - difference is in Fallout, I'm usually somewhat hesitant to pull the trigger. In Borderlands, the number 1 solution to all of your problems is pull the trigger. Story-wise, I remember feeling very confused with the main storyline, but I remember loving Zed's Island. Unfortunately I can't give specifics right now since I've only recently begun my replay, but I can say that I am definitely hooked again.

Not really fun, definitely not addicting.